Moreover, an estimated 18,000 children across the state are uninsured but currently are ineligible under current state criteria. According to the Juneau Empire, Sen. Bettye Davis is proposing that the state expand eligibility from 175 percent of poverty level to 200 percent — but only for those age 12 and under. (The average across all states for eligibility is 241 percent of the federal poverty line.)

Why the age limit and all the wrangling? Why almost two years later is the state still fighting over expanding KidCare?

Because, according to Davis, it is the only way “to avoid the pregnancy and abortion concerns.”

So now, program eligibility is being re-written to create exclusions centered around the arrival of puberty, so the governor doesn’t need to worry about money possibly being used for an abortion, even though the abortion exception is already so narrow it only applies to cases to very few cases. Teenagers of both sexes, as well as pregnant women, are being excluded from accessible primary health care simply to appease anti-choice zealotry.

Why not go a step further, and allow all teen boys, and all teen girls who haven’t yet begun to menstruate, to be able to apply for KidCare, too? Perhaps girls could be asked to prove whether they are or aren’t having their periods yet in order to receive medical assistance?

It appears not to bother Governor Parnell that the health and lives of born children living in his state are being held hostage to political hysteria.

They never care that women and children are held hostage by hysteria. Love the fetus, hate the child. My governor (Mary Fallin of OK) took away insurance coverage for newborns so parents now have to buy a separate child-only plan, but our legislature is inches away from approving a personhood bill. This “culture of life” is anything but.

crowepps

“There are the occasions that men—intellectual men, clever men, engaged men—insist on playing devil’s advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women’s Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that’s so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.”